All articles filed in December 2017

“There are literally are no businesses here,” explains 61-year-old Lawrence McElroy, Historic Cane Hill’s recently hired full-time museum director. “There’s not a restaurant, a gas station. There’s nothing. This is the closest thing to a business right here.”

“I love antique or coin-silver spoons for tasting or plating—the more worn and unique, the better. I also love antique butchery knives and sharpeners/honing rods,” says Matthew Cooper, chef of The Preacher’s Son.

Searcy. Home of Harding University. Seat of White County, and its largest city at 24,318 souls. Home of Gov. Mike Beebe. Holder of two Arkansas superlatives: the oldest known church building still standing (Smyrna Methodist) and the oldest Arkansas courthouse still being used for its original purpose. These facts? They don’t exactly portend a people inclined to rest.

AS OF THIS moment, it hasn’t arrived. At the corner of Main Street and Capitol Avenue, orange fencing lines the perimeter of the jackhammered brick lot rendered to rubble. A large black cylinder, like a charred smokestack, rises 5 feet from the ground, hollow. Soon, though, there will be a tree—the largest downtown Little Rock…

IN JULY 2016, the Hot Springs-based photographer David Yerby reached out to the magazine with an idea: Born profoundly deaf, raised mostly in the hearing world, he wanted to capture what life was like for young people at the Arkansas School for the Deaf—to illustrate for a hearing readership the students’ day-to-day. Off and on…

SOMETIMES THINGS JUST turn out the way they’re supposed to. This year’s “Arkansans of the Year” feature? It’s one of those things. When we finalized the concept for the shoot with photographer John David Pittman, we had aesthetics in mind. We wanted the photos to be moody and dark, yet veiled in color—the opposite of…

Looking back, reflecting on 2017, it’s tempting to dwell on the dark spots. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t have to be like that. Because if you look more closely—say, closer to home—you’ll see we’re surrounded by brightness, by people who dedicate themselves daily to lifting us up, not bringing us down. And these seven Arkansans? They’re proof that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

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Arkansas Life magazine digs deep into The Natural State each month, unearthing surprising stories and exposing readers to new facets of a familiar place. To put it simply, we’re naturally curious—and we’re proud, like you, to call this place home.